Macs at Work: Five Little Known Surprises
Employees can't wait to get their hands on company-issued Macs -- the hip, user-friendly alternative to clunky PCs. But once they get them, employees realize Macs have their own quirks and present their own little surprises.
CIO — More and more employees wish their companies would give them Macs. After all, Macs are powerful, sleek-looking machines that also run iTunes and Guitar Hero.
Yet Macs at work have their own quirks. Just ask Tom Kelly of Healthcare IP Partners, a 60-employee technology service provider for hospitals. He led a sweeping effort to bring Macs into a Windows-only enterprise a couple of years ago.
Healthcare IP Partners began moving toward cloud services like NetSuite, which made the company less dependent on a single desktop operating system. Kelly, who wears two hats—CFO and CIO—at the company, saw the potential for Macs to relieve desktop-support management headaches and cut support costs.
Kelly contracted with a nearby Apple reseller and Apple support outsourcer. He adopted Fusion, a desktop virtualization machine, to let Mac users run Windows. Then he gave employees the option to work on a Mac or a PC.
Mac adoption in the enterprise skyrocketed. In only two years, eight out of 10 Healthcare IP Partners employees moved to a Mac. Kelly figures all of his company's employees will be on Macs this year, and he'll be able to dramatically reduce internal desktop support.
Kelly says the Mac experience has gone exceptionally smooth. However, there were a few surprises. Here are his top five:
1. A Mac Delayed
When employees learn they're getting a Mac, they often become giddy and want it right now. New employees are especially anxious. Yet too often a new Mac doesn't arrive in time for the new employee's first day, Kelly says. "It's probably the biggest gotcha."
Kelly orders a Mac from a reseller five miles away from Healthcare IP Partners' headquarters in Minneapolis, Minn. The order specifies Mac hardware configurations, while Kelly's team loads software. Many times, though, the reseller doesn't have the right equipment in stock.
The delay may just be a couple of days, Kelly says, which isn't a big deal. For new employees excited on their first day, however, "it's just a bad start," he says.
2. Remember the Apps
Mac users tend to use Firefox for most of their browsing, but they can also fire up Internet Explorer on Windows via Fusion. The browser options can confuse end-users, however. They forget which cloud-based apps work better on one browser vs. another.
"Not all of these cloud apps will even run on Chrome or Firefox, only Internet Explorer," Kelly says. "On the other hand, NetSuite works a little faster on the Mac."
